Ljubisa Rajic skriver i Dagbladet i dag (2. juli s. 17) i en artikkel
datert torsdag 1. juli at "The Guardian skriver at at det var UCK som
under bombingen tvang hundretusener albanere til å flykte til Albania og
Makedonia for å skape et gunstig mediabilde...".
Kan det være denne tekst Rajic sikter til:
"He also disclosed that it was KLA advice, rather than Serbian
deportations, which led some of the hundreds of thousands of Albanians to
leave Kosovo."?
Men "advice" er jo ikke tvang, da.
Soldaten som skriver "acted in part as an information officer and one of
his jobs was to film the plight of displaced Albanian civilians with a
video camera."
Funnet i følgende artikkel i The Guardian for 30. juni.
http://www.newsunlimited.co.uk/Kosovo/Story/0,2763,62134,00.html
Knut Rognes
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KLA player longs to retire from world stage
As rebel soldiers begin to disarm, actor Lirak Qelaj looks forward to
casting aside his fatigues
...
Jonathan Steele in Pristina
Wednesday June 30, 1999
The Guardian
His first love is acting, and he can hardly wait to throw off his
camouflage fatigues in three weeks, when the Kosovo Liberation Army's
demobilisation is supposed to be complete, and get back on stage after six
months in one of the toughest regions of the war.
At 26, Lirak Qelaj is one of the few young Pristina professionals who took
up the gun. Yesterday, with the KLA in the process of handing over its
weapons as agreed with Nato, Mr Qelaj said he had no regrets: "We're all
just waiting to be demobilised and go home. I'm delighted."
Most KLA volunteers were villagers, who became partisans in defence of
their farms. Later they were joined by expatriate ethnic Albanians who came
home to Kosovo from working as lorry drivers or labourers in Germany,
Switzerland, and Austria.
Mr Qelaj took the decision to join the KLA at the end of last year. With a
wife and two small daughters it was not easy to go to the hills; but that
is what he did, shortly before the Serb winter offensive began.
In five months of fighting, two of them after Nato started its bombing
campaign on March 24, Mr Qelaj saw the Yugoslav army at close range, and
his candid view is that the Serbs were not defeated. Nor was Nato's bombing
as effective in Kosovo as he and his comrades had hoped. In the end, he
said yesterday in Pristina, "It was the Belgrade civilians who were tired
of the bombing" who pressed President Slobodan Milosevic to throw in the
towel.
The KLA, he confirmed, had great difficulty standing up to Serb attacks and
was able to do little to protect the thousands of people displaced since
late March. Only towards the end of the war did it have some success when
it stopped trying to hold ground and switched to guerrilla tactics.
He also disclosed that it was KLA advice, rather than Serbian deportations,
which led some of the hundreds of thousands of Albanians to leave Kosovo.
"Nato bombing did eventually stop the Serbs moving their tanks around, but
it didn't happen at the beginning. The Serbs used 30 tanks in an operation
against us at Bradesh about a week after the bombing started. At that time
Nato was concentrating on hitting buildings and other fixed structures."
He denied that there was any direct air support for the KLA from Nato. The
Bradesh attack forced the ethnic Albanian force further back into the
hills. They had already had to give ground on the first day of the air
campaign.
Mr Qelaj was based in the Lap region to the north of Podujevo, close to the
province's border with the rest of Serbia. Straddling the main road between
Kosovo and Serbia, it was heavily guarded by the Yugoslav army. He acted in
part as an information officer and one of his jobs was to film the plight
of displaced Albanian civilians with a video camera.
In one episode, around 160,000 displaced people were stranded near the
village of Kolic on the east side of the Pristina-Podujevo road. Once the
KLA had no more flour to give them "we urged the people to go on to the
main road and start walking to Pristina. We thought that if the Serbs had
lots of witnesses, it would be safer for the people."
The Serbs kept these ethnic Albanians camped on the road for two days, he
said: "Men were separated from women and we later found 80 bodies near
Kolic." Where were these bodies now? "We buried them in the mountains."
Later, about a month into the air raids, when the Serbs launched a new
offensive from Bajgora in the north of the Lap region, the KLA urged
another crowd hiding in the woods and numbering almost 60,000 to leave for
Macedonia and Albania. "We could no longer protect them," he said. "We had
to withdraw ourselves."
By then the KLA was running out of ammunition and decided to try capturing
it from the Serbs. "We formed groups of five, maximum 10 people, who
started to attack houses in the villages where we thought the Serbs were
storing weapons. We also ambushed them on the roads." On five occasions, he
said, he saw units from the Lap zone attack Yugoslav army and police buses
on the road from Serbia. "I think they lost at least 200 men. We had
rocket-propelled grenades, Zola anti-tank weapons and an American weapon
which fires highly explosive nitroglycerine."
Mr Qelaj cast a different light on one of the war's highly publicised
events - the Nato attack on a bus near Luzhane in which Serb and ethnic
Albanian civilians were apparently killed. The Serbs brought western
reporters in to view the remains the next day. The KLA, Mr Qelaj said,
"could listen to the Serb police radios and we heard someone report the
incident and give the order, 'Remove the bodies of the greens'. Greens was
their word for Yugoslav army troops because they wore green uniforms.
"I suppose they then brought in bodies of other people they had killed
earlier. Anyway, Albanians never used that bus route by then. They were too
scared of the Serbs."
The Nato onslaught eventually forced the Serbs to stop all offensives three
weeks before Mr Milosevic gave up in early June. "They were exhausted, and
could shell only from fixed positions. They gave up big trenches and had
tiny two-man things in the woods so as not to be seen from the air."
The KLA had about 7,000 fighters in Lap and lost 70 of them, he said. Often
they had to carry arms on a shift system because there were too few guns.
Even so, he said, "I think we caused more casualties among Serb police and
Yugoslav troops than Nato did."
Now, he said, he expected in dependence for Kosovo "in three or five years,
maximum 10. We want to join Nato. Maybe this will help us."
But the war has been a cruel experience. Apart from losing a good deal of
weight, Lirak Mr Qelaj is no longer the ebullient athletic figure I knew
before the war. "I can't help differentiating", he said, "between those who
made sacrifices and those who didn't".
© Copyright Guardian Media Group plc. 1999
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